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fayesmovinglibrary 's review for:

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
3.75
adventurous challenging inspiring medium-paced

Hear me out: Princess Mononoke meets Blue Eye Samurai

Positives:
- wildly unique and whimsical storytelling??
- the flowery writing…. The lyricism in these quotes man…. I annotated quite a bit 

Negatives:
- I don’t think this needed to be as convoluted & confusing to follow, while I really respect all of the unique things this is doing & had a really good time at different parts, I’m coming away from it not actually even really understanding the core story??
- the purple prose was a double edged sword I fear because at times I did think it was a tad much. 


Ultimately, the interwoven perspectives of the grandmother telling a story to her grandson, the theatre production dream-esque sequences, the fantasy journey, all the 2nd person POV’s were all such creative ways to talk this story and I have to give it props for how cool this book sincerely is. At the same time, I am walking away from it only really having a probably less than basic understanding of what I read which is a problem. I am someone who is prone to skimming when I get bored in books, but I really did not skim with this one and in fact was constantly re-reading portions that were confusing and looking up other people’s reviews to try to break things down even further. I fear it’s a tad too smart for me perhaps?? Or it is just doing a bit too much?? Idk, I’m probably the problem.